Ismet Inonu

Ismet Inonu (14 September 1884-25 December 1973) was Prime Minister of Turkey from 1 November 1923 to 22 November 1924 (interrupting Ali Fethi Okyar's terms), from 4 March 1925 to 25 October 1937 (succeeding Okyar and preceding Celal Bayar), and from 20 November 1961 to 20 February 1965 (succeeding Emin Fahrettin Ozdilek and preceding Suat Hayri Urguplu), as well as President of Turkey from 11 November 1938 to 22 May 1950 (succeeding Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and preceding Celal Bayar).

Biography
Ismet Inonu was born Mustafa Izmet in Izmir, Ottoman Empire in 1884, and he was commissioned into the Ottoman Army in 1903. He became a prominent participant in the rebellion of the Young Turks in 1908, and became a member of the General Staff during World War I. He took a leading part in the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-2, where he gained a famous victory at Inonu in 1921. An increasingly close ally of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as Foreign Minister he negotiated the favorable terms of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. He was the first Prime Minister of the new Republic of Turkey. In this office, and as Ataturk's successor as President, he did more than anybody else to confirm and strengthen Kemal's legacy of a secular, Westernized state. Perhaps most importantly, for the most part he kept the country out of World War II, which it could have ill-afforded given his efforts at economic and social reform. He finally created a multi-party system in 1945, and subsequently lost the elections of 1950. He remained head of his party, the Republican People's Party, until 1972, and was Prime Minister following the army coup of 1960. He died in 1973.